Lucerne, June 21, 59. Good spirits are evidently not to be kept on end by the best of will ! How goes it with yours ? The day before yesterday I resumed composition with relish, yesterday it halted, and to-day I cannot even make a start : this godforsaken weather checks all spirits, rainclouds and rain weigh like lead ! I was really hoping the Prussian mobilisation would send us some wind from the north, but it still adheres to south and west ; it's enough to make one desperate. And to endure it for 3 months at a place where fine weather is the conditio sine qua non of any chance of holding out ! What annoys me most, is when the rain prevents my morning ride now. I have developed a regular mania for riding: there I have so direct an association with my steed, which becomes quite a part of me during the motion, demands my whole attention and engrossment, and thus provides a wholly pleasurable company, with the quite distinctive feature of its all being one continuous contact. I could write you much more about riding. I must guard against allowing a passion for the horse to rise, because I might again be learning something that I must forgo. Many a thing and oft have I renounced already, and the wanderings of the immortal Jew should be doubled by no steed. Nothing has occurred. My discreet friends preserve a reverential silence. Even the music-journal \Neue Zeitschrift\ serves up the celebrated Future-feast in snippets.* Now I almost wish to have no visitors from over there this summer ; before the finishing of Tristan, such a noisy incursion could scarcely do aught but disturb me. Indeed they all mean something so totally other than I ; one must admit that to oneself, without any bitterness. It is only with a positive shudder, that I can think back to the goings-on of autumn 1856 ;f and when I remember what torments the visits of last summer caused me, when I simply counted the hours at last to people's departure, I cannot rightly conceive how I'm to look forward to those visits now with any feeling save dismay. And yet they can have been inspired by nothing but affection for me. A queer state of affairs ! What a crank I must be growing! Perhaps it will be different with me when the Tristan's finished. At present it holds me : then I shall hold it. — t The six-week visit of Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein to Zurich. — Tr. Many fine Zwiebacks came yesterday : they're increasing my chattels prodigiously ; whatever's to be done with all the boxes ? We shall have to think out some use for them. The other day I was amused by a supplement to the Intelligenzblatt [a Zurich newspaper] ; I guessed Herwegh as the author, and asked him in a couple of lines [17th]. He confessed with delight. Such zeal's a good joke to me. The article was rather high-faluting here and there, bu& really written with much wit — with more than I had suspected in Herwegh — and that is enough in itself to call for hopeful recognition. The subject [the war— see, p. 128] is so gruesome that wit and irony, in truth, alone can make the aspect of the world endurable to one ; they constitute at once a frank admission of the world's atrocity, whilst our feebleness in its despite is not concealed, but equally admitted. Whoso can treat it with a serious face, and hope and will, himself is still stuck deep in the illusion. Well, that indeed's the case with H. as yet ; but it hides itself behind the zeal of his denunciation of the mistakenness of others' efforts : and just in that game he turns witty. With Shakespeare, whom he cites in passing, I had to have a good long laugh again ; which brought me back to my favourite theme, of company with the great being ever the best, in the long run, to help us across the world. That curiously witty smile of Shakespeare's ! That godlike contempt for the world ! It really is the summit to which man can soar from this misery: the Genius can mount no higher, — only the Saint! The latter, however, has need of wit no more. Myself, I first feel quite restored from pain, when this smile steals once more through my spirit ; a smile that under circumstances, and if an undeception as to special big illusions aids it, may grow into a hearty laugh. With politics I catch myself taking things too seriously at times : the faintest hope of good-sense and good-will among men is a snare ; it lures us still to by-ways whence one cannot come quick enough back, since that road also but ends in one's doing men injustice. One should repeat to oneself again and again, that good-sense and good-will are never the factors of history, and only so much of them dwells in the nature of men as to prevent the race from going altogether under ; whereas they may help the individual out from life, indeed, but not within it. How many hopes are being smashed again now ! How plainly also will the issue of this present war shew the magnanimous that he has not to seek his redemption where every battlefield can teach him who is ruler of the world. Yet, who will understand it ? Comes a new generation, and the old game begins afresh ! Thus at the aspect even of a battlefield a smile may take one, over the eternal mock we make of ourselves. However — that leads far, so we'll drop it to-day — ! One mustn't take even that in too much earnest, but close our eye ! — A thousand greetings. — R. W.
Richard Wagner
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, translated by Ellis, No. 79